According to Joe Romm at Climate Progress, the compromise version of the Stimulus package dropped some $50 Billion in pork for the nuclear power industry.  If that is where they got their savings, let’s give a big Hurrah.

Of course, you will need to call an ambulance as Chuck Devore has a fit of apoplexy over this.  

Of all of the things that some legislators tried to cram into the stimulus package, they got the Green stuff about as wrong as coal.  Why they would cut back on doing energy improvements to Federal Buildings… something that has a positive payback for years and then try to cram a big help for nuclear into this is beyond me.  These are the reasons people know think that they are all in the pay of the corporations.

This will, however, become a Devore issue against Boxer, assuming that someone with more stature than Devore doesn’t step into the race.  Maybe Devore thinks that his role in life is to go once more into the breach for his party.  But, unlike Henry V, I doubt that he will have much success. Still, that candidacy will keep the issue alive for a long time.  

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the entire State Legislature is in need a new cerbral cortex.  They are not thinking straight.  We are in a budget crisis and can come to no agreement between Democrats who are afraid that the unions will recall them and Republicans who are afraid that they will be booted out of the party if they vote for a new tax.

Personally, I would rather listen to a scientist like Dr. Chu.  At least when he speaks you have more of a chance to hear a fact rather than some BS designed to make you think that the legislature is on your side.  

This comment from Dr. Chu, as reported in the LA Times, is the only one that I have seen telling the truth about the future of California.

‘We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California,’ Steven Chu says.

 

Start considering that in terms of budget impact.  Loss of value of farmland hitting real estate taxes, again.  Loss of the biggest industry in California and it’s sale tax revenues.  Loss of a major workforce and the implication on income taxes.

One indicator of what California may expect is to watch what is happening in Australia and Argentina.  Argentina’s wheat crop is off by over 30% from last year.  The story in Australia is worse.

Drought in Australia’s main food growing region of the Murray-Darling river system continues, with water stores near record lows despite recent rains, the head of the government’s oversight body for the system said on Wednesday.

The impact on irrigated crops is particularly bad.

The drought has already wiped more than A$20 billion from the $1 trillion economy since 2002. It is the worst in 117 years of record-keeping, with 80 percent of eucalyptus trees already dead or stressed in the Murray-Darling region

 If this is California’s future, we don’t have the right people sitting in Sacramento.

Let’s face the facts.  These will seem to be the good old days before I die and I am already drawing social security.  We have a governor who wants to build more dams… for what?  We have a State Senate Natural Resources and Water committee holding a hearing in Santa Monica on Friday where they will discuss “Improving Water Conservation and Management in Southern California: Successes and Opportunities”.  Actually, it reads more like Fran Pavley wanting to show the local folks that she is on the job.  

This year will be particularly challenging. Consecutive record-dry winters have seriously diminished available water supply throughout the state. Locally, we may soon be facing severe restrictions on water use. But it is hard to explain to our citizens the necessity for mandatory water rationing, when there are less disruptive means to meet our water needs.

What the good Senator seems not to realize is that there is not going to be enough years with enough rain to ease our way through.

All of this gamesmanship in Sacramento is rather like the Clippers playing the GS Warriors.  Two losers trying not to lose.  So, how do we build a budget for this scenario?  I don’t think it is possible.  

It seems as if AB 32 is all we are going to have to deal with climate change.  That is perhaps the single biggest failure of our generation.

The connections between global warming and our energy policy are well known and only the stubbornest Republicans hold on to the Gospel according to Senator Inhofe. After Secretary Chu says that energy is “the defining issue of our time” you expect something to happen.  When Barbara Boxer replaced Inhofe as the Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, most of us who understand ecology greeted the change with a sigh of relief.  Now, even Boxer is saying that we will get no legislation on climate change in 2009.  At least those words were used in her press conference yesterday as reported by Joe Robb at Climate Progress.  

I am not sure that we can afford to wait that long.  The next meeting of the IPPC committee is in December in Copenhagen.  If the US Senate does not have it’s act together by then, the rest of the world is not going to take anything we say very seriously.  I would think that not even Chuck “Nukes are Nice” Devore could do less.  Boxer appears to have no sense of urgency on this.

Maybe she ought to have a long sit down talk with James Hansen. I would probably help them both. I know that Hansen has testified to her committee before. I also know that his public pronouncements have been alarmist, but have consistently under-estimated the rate at which our environment is changing.

At least, Boxer announced her

Principles for Global Warming Legislation at the press conference. While they sound good, there are totally without any substantive implementation, and that leaves us with AB 32.

Both AB 32 and Boxer’s Principles are flawed in that they rely on the magic of the market to provide the mechanism for controlling emissions.  This is the same thinking that gave us derivatives based on mortgage backed securities.  This is the same mechanism that is failing to produce the expected change in the EU because companies cheat and regulators don’t regulate.

This is worth more discussion, which I will do in a series of posts this week.  Let it suffice to say that I am once again disappointed in the fact that Boxer fails to live up to her reputation as a champion of the environment.  

I learn a little every day.  Today, I had another reminder that when you dig through the muck, the slime rises to the top.  This item at rawstory ties Prop 8, the move to hide al donations from public purview, and the connection between a Christian Reconstructionist named Howard Ahmanson and a political consultant named Wayne Johnson.

Ahmanson seems hell bent for leather on trying to turn California into a Christian version of the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. He put almost $1 million into ProtectMarriage.com

Johnson is someone I researched during the 2006 CA-11 Congressional race when we got together to Say No To Pombo.  He has been Pombo’s political consultant in every race since day one. Well known for last minute dirty tricks, etc. it is not surprising to see that Johnson also controlled John Doolittle’s PAC and not provides the same service for Tom McClintock.

After reading this, I am so glad to have worked for McNerney.  

Schwarzenegger is so completely set on pushing through a peripheral canal that he will do almost anything to make it happen.  The latest is this letter to Obama asking that they modify or set aside environmental processes on infrastructure projects. See his letter on his own site. http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/p…

The most recent plan for the peripheral canal says that they don’t need legislative approval and are not asking for a bond issue.  It looks like a backroom deal between the Gov and our two Senators… or at lest Feinstein… to pay for the canal out of infrastructure money and they can get going before Arnold leaves office without any environmental checks.

Of course, this is only our future he is dealing away. Thankfully, at least on Congressman, Jerry McNerney has come out saying that it is a Baaaaaaad idea. Glad I voted for him. http://www.house.gov/apps/list…

Thanks to the work of Progressive Democrats, the Green Party’s Bruce Delgado won election as the Mayor of Marina.  For that, we Greens thank you.

BTW: according to KSBW Salinas last night, Monterey County had an 85% turnout.  

It is a bit of turn around.  I worked my ass off for McNerney in 2004 and in 2006.  The Republicans handed him re-election this year by fielding a real estate candidate so bad that even the National Board of Realtors put over $500 K into McNerney’s campaign.  

There are a lot of things that Greens and Progressive Democrats agreed on.  If you took the list of recommendations for ballot proposals, the one published on Calitics and the one published on the Green Party of CA site.  The only difference was on Prop 3. where the issue was very much that the money allocated by a previous measure for the same purposes had not yet been spent… $300 Million remaining.

But while this blog is fascinated by why your results were not what you expected, I am turning my attention to NOLA.  There, on Dec. 2, a corrupt Democratic Congressman named William Jefferson will begin his trial on Corruption charges.  Yesterday, Jefferson won a Democratic Primary runoff to keep his seat.  I have been told that his opponent, Helena Moreno, says that she will not support Jefferson.

The Green Party is fielding a candidate: Malik Rahim.  When Hurricane Katrina struck, the government could not keep the lights on. Rahim had electricity at his non-profit.  When the hospitals were flooded and patients were dying, Rahim kept a medical clinic open.  While Jefferson has been lining his own pockets… or stashing $90 K in his freezer… Rahim’s non-profit has built or refurbished 2,000 homes in New Orleans.

I would hope that Pelosi cuts Jefferson loose and lets him swing in the wind.  To do other than that would be to put party loyalty above principles and would tell me a lot more about Pelosi’s character.

I have started a full press to raise additional money for Rahim.  I guess that I am challenging readers of Calitics to put principle above party and help out Rahim.  At some point, I want to see a Democrats for Rahim Committee. There is one month left, to change America, to demonstrate that the old politics of cronyism is gone, that corruption is never again to be swept under the rugs of the ethics committee offices.